Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness

Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness Reflections on Negation in Nishida and Buddhism Matteo Cestari This paper aims to develop some questions addressed in a previ- ous volume of Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy. There I questioned the “interiorist” terminology and the manner in which it poses problems, casting doubt on whether it is capable of conveying the general meaning of Nishida’s philosophy, since it seems almost unable to show its practical dimension (Cestari 2009). Here I will concentrate my analysis on the modern idea of absolute nothingness (絶対無) as compared to the original, classical Buddhist notion of śūnyatā (J. kū, C. kong 空) or “emptiness.” The importance of this relationship lies in its being the only theoretical feature that, according to Maraldo, typifies the philosophers of the Kyoto school.1 In this paper, I will mainly consider the case 1. Maraldo 2001 lists several criteria to define the Kyoto school’s identity, but it is significant that absolute nothingness is the only genuinely theoretical one. In fact, the other criteria are historical and biographical (the relationship with Nishida and Tanabe or the academic position at the University of Kyoto), political (conservative political positions, and notably the rejection of Marxism and a certain attitude toward the Japanese nation and the Pacific War), or cultural and religious (a positive attitude toward Asian culture—particularly the Japanese tradition—and the relationship with religion in general and Buddhism in particular). 320 matteo cestari | 321 of Nishida and his ambiguity toward Buddhism. Unlike Nishida, other thinkers of the school like Nishitani Keiji, especially after the end of the Pacific War, seem to return to a more classical, if philosophically revised, idea of kū. It is my conviction that the relationship with Buddhism is not simply a biographical datum but may be seen to have exerted a deep influence on Nishida’s theoretical views. Attention to this notion leads into a discussion of the Kyoto school texts and how they are interpreted. Obscurities require that interpreters and critics be aware of the cultural context within which these writings were composed and read. Only then is it possible to grasp what is most essential, which is often something that is not directly expressed (see Kasulis 2010). A proper understanding of tacit assumptions is particularly important in the case of Nishida. To evaluate his thinking critically on a world forum, finding the right words and metaphors to translate his ideas is necessary but not sufficient. Even that is difficult to accomplish without clarifying a general hermeneutic perspective. Only in this way can Nishi- da’s essays become more intelligible both in terms of what is said and of what is left unsaid. Buddhism may be of service here in bridging the cultural and historical gap that divides Japanese philosophers from non-Japanese readers and even Japanese readers who are not conscious of their cultural background. It can spell the difference between a de-contextualized interpretation and one that is more self-conscious of the frame of reference from which an author is operating. In reading Nishida’s essays, however, one is struck by the relative absence, or at least scarcity, of direct citations of Buddhist texts or direct references to Buddhist ideas. May we still conclude that Nishida is influenced by Buddhism even though there is almost no evidence of the fact? Strange as it may seem, that it precisely what we must say. At the same time, I am persuaded that this is not a question that can be addressed, let alone resolved, by appealing to strict philological analysis alone. The particular nature of religious and philosophical texts in China and Japan demands more. Cultural interpretation also has an important part to play. Accordingly, I will consider the place of the Buddhist notion of śūnyatā more as a hermeneutic pattern than as a historically and philologically attested relationship. 322 | Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness Cultural and historical considerations How are we to consider the meaning of absolute nothingness in Nishida’s thought? The question is complicated by a certain ambiguity in the notion itself. If, as I am insisting, Buddhism is a decisive element in establishing the originality of the Kyoto school, the foundational idea of absolute nothingness needs a Buddhist reading. Even so, there are at least three strains of ambiguity in the notion of absolute nothingness that complicate the task. The first concerns the way cultural and historical aspects overlap with and theoretical and religious ones. The second has to do mainly with the genealogy of the notion, which is a hybrid of German idealism and Buddhism. A third ambiguity stems from having to define “Japanese philosophy” in such a way as to confront western universalizing tendencies (often inadvertently ambiguous in themselves) with what amounted to a peculiar blend of East and West. In the end, there is no skirting the ambiguities, even though they may not be easy to identify. Still, insight into Buddhist teachings is essential for orienting our overall interpretation of Nishida’s philosophy. The modern origins of absolute nothingness give the idea a cultural aura that belongs to Japan’s modernization in the Meiji and Taishō. At that time numerous philosophers tried to find a “logic” (論理) to reflect Japanese particularity in a philosophical context. The program of for- malizing the Japanese soul or ethos or Weltanschauung in philosophical language was considered essential, given the strong cultural pressures exerted by western knowledge and Japan’s lack of an equivalent to academic philosophy. Absolute nothingness may also be considered one way of filling this lacuna. The need to clarify a Japaneselogos was one Nishida himself shared, as typified in the introduction toFrom Acting to Seeing.2 To speak of the modern origins of absolute nothingness implies that it needs to be understood in a cultural context where it represents a response to the disenchantment and disorientation that followed the loss 2. “At the root of Oriental culture, which nurtured our ancestors for thou- sands of years, is there not something hiding that sees the form of the formless and hears the sound of the soundless? Our mind unceasingly searches for this thing and I wish to give a philosophical foundation to this demand” (nkz 4: 6). matteo cestari | 323 of premodern reference points. Indeed, it was this challenge of moder- nity, not Buddhism, that motivated the thinkers of the Kyoto school to practice tetsugaku or western-styled academic philosophy. This is not to say that they passively accepted from the West its universalistic discourse. Their attempt was to raise the particular thinking of Japan to the level of universal philosophical learning, or alternatively, to rethink the universal in terms of the particularity of Japan. In effect, they brought into question the inherent parochialism in western “universal” ideas, and they did so by alternatively adopting, criticizing, complementing, and otherwise thinking beyond the hegemony of received categories of thought. I find it difficult to agree with the recent critique of Sakai Naoki, who seems to indicate a universalistic dimension in their philosophical venture: The discipline to which the Kyoto school was committed was “western philosophy”…. It was neither “Japanese,” “Asian,” nor “Buddhist” philosophy, even though its medium was the language of the Japanese nation; it was unambiguously the universal philosophy, the universal- ity of which could not be modified by any national, regional, civiliza- tional, or religious particularity. (Sakai 2008, 187–8) I would rather say that the Kyoto school was experimenting with both western-style philosophy and Japanese thinking, and that their aim was to bring East and West closer together, despite the obscurities that this unaccustomed blend might give rise to (see nkz 12: 385–94). Examining the historical and cultural background of the Kyoto school, as representatives of the Japanese intelligentsia, alerts us to the ways in which an idea like absolute nothingness could function as an ideological tool to help create a religiously and philosophically homogeneous and concentrated “East” to set against the “West” and its culture of being. As a category of thought it condensed cultural, religious and philosophical elements into an identity that the East could brandish as its own. Hisamatsu Shin’ichi’s “Oriental Nothingness” (1970) is a case in point, and it must be said that at times Nishida himself, albeit from a more nuanced position, teetered on the edge of such a position in distinguish- ing the western tendency to self-affirmation from an eastern tendency to self-negation (see, for example, nkz 11: 174). By the same token, absolute nothingness was also a hermeneutical tool for reading western 324 | Between Emptiness and Absolute Nothingness cultural history. In this sense, nothingness became a matter of cultural identity, a kind of Buddhist shortcut to modern nationalistic thought. While Buddhism was being presented as the essence of Japanese or Asian civilization, absolute nothingness, employed as a hermeneutic device to interpret Buddhist history, often came to be considered the epitome of Buddhist, particularly Zen, teaching. In this way, it affected the way in which the cultural and religious history of Asia was approached as a whole. A simple reconstruction of history based on a dualism between western being and eastern nothingness not only rides roughshod over the evidence; it also sidesteps the complex genesis of the idea of nothingness with its fusion of Buddhist and idealist elements. As is well known, Hegel and Kant were instrumental in the formation of categories and themes that make up the philosophies of Nishida and Tanabe. Moreover, the Kyoto school thinkers shared with many other prewar philosophers an interest in building a new logic.

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